About Money: “What am I doing wrong?”

By Neale Donald Walsch

Okay, everyone, this is an exceptionally long post, but it is about an exceptionally important question, recently posted by “Sabine” in “Ask Neale” at CWG Connect. I am publishing it here because I want you to know what kind of powerful interactions are occurring every day at www.CWGConnect.com

DO NOT FAIL TO READ THIS REPLY IF YOU ARE FACING CHALLENGES RIGHT NOW WITH MONEY.

Dear Neale,

I hope I can make clear what my problem is. It is not easy for me to do so in English. But let’s give it a try:

You said that whatever it is I feel missing in my life, I should give to others. Well, for many years, money is a big problem in my life. I have many debts, and no matter what I do, money doesn‘t come to me. No matter what I try I will end up poorer than before. Don’t get me wrong, I still have a great life. I have a really big heart and I help everyone. I (we, as a family) have 2 godchilds in charity organisations, who have a home and can go to school because we sponsor them. I give something to eat and drink to a homeless person, every time I see one. I foster pets. And I really love all of this. I don‘t want to complain. I would even say that this is what makes me feel alive - helping others. Making their lifes better. What I don‘t understand is why my own life is so extremely hard - on the financial side. I consider myself as a lucky person but why do I have to struggle so hard? Why do I not have any luck when it comes to money? I could do so much more, help so much more, if I didn‘t have that struggle, have my debts. What am I doing wrong? I am grateful for all the things I have (family, home, etc). But still I am close to losing everything (house, car) because I can’t afford them anymore. Thank you for your answer. And thank you for all your teaching. May God bless you and all around you.

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@Sabine:

I am so sorry, my friend, that you are experiencing life in a way which is not comfortable for you around the matter of money. This is one of the most frequently received and challenging letters that come to me. Conversations with God discusses the matter of finances, money, and general abundance in several places, so I am going to offer you my best response here, based on my understanding of the CWG material as well as my observations of life around me.

You have asked, “What am I doing wrong?”...and the first thing I want to tell you is: NOTHING. You are doing nothing “wrong.” You are not experiencing financial stress because of something that you, as an individual, are doing or not doing.

Many, many people all over the world are facing the same challenge of not having enough money. Now, more so than ever before. Many have the problem of not even having enough to eat, of not having warm clothes to put on their back, of not being able to obtain medicine they need, or a place to live. I’ve been in places where thousands live in shelters made of scraps of cardboard or plywood and junked sheet metal for roofs, with whatever heat they can get supplied by whatever small fire they can create with whatever trash they may from day-to-day find.

This is not my attempt to tell you that some people have it even worse than you, Sabine, so please don’t hear it that way. This is my attempt to help you see that the problem of not having enough money does not result from some metaphysical or spiritual “failure” on your part. As I said earlier, it is not because you are not “doing” something right, or not “thinking” right.

You are doing everything you can possibly do to demonstrate a consciousness of sufficiency. You are kind, generous, compassionate, caring, and sharing every chance that you get. You are following all of the “rules” --- including the guideline that CWG suggests that if there is something you wish to experience more of in your life, be the Source of that in the life of another.

So the first thing I want to do is commend you and compliment you on how you are living your life. You are being perfectly wonderful and acting perfectly consciously, and the problem is not that you are not doing what you need to do. The problem is that it has not produced the results you had hoped for where money is concerned.

This is because --- I need to repeat a third time to make sure that you fully grasp this --- the problem has nothing to do with your own singular and individual consciousness and actions. The problem has to do with the COLLECTIVE consciousness and the COLLECTIVE actions of humanity as a group.

The fact is that the largest number of people on this planet --- by FAR, the largest number --- are facing money problems every day of their lives. Why? Because of the collective consciousness and the collective actions of humanity at large.

Let's look at some statistics as an example of what I mean here. In the 1960s, the overall income of the richest 20 percent of the world's population was thirty times that of the poorest 20 percent. Today, it is not thirty times larger, it is 224 times larger.

That’s right. I said 224 times larger. Let me illustrate what that means in practical terms...

Today the income of the richest 225 people in the world is equal to the income of 3 BILLION poor people. Today the income of the THREE richest INDIVIDUALS in the world is equal to the collective national incomes of the 49 poorest COUNTRIES.

There is a way that we could end much of the suffering that this disparity creates. It would take no more than five per cent of the overall annual cost of weapons in the world to feed all the starving children, to protect them from dying of preventable diseases, and to make basic education accessible to all. It has been said that if we simply spent a tiny portion of the money we allocate to weapons on improving the lives of people in the world’s poorest countries, we would have no need to defend ourselves against their rage.

I have only gone this deeply into the way our world’s money system operates because I wanted to show you that the problem is not YOU. You are struggling against a global Collective Consciousness that is working against you. These statistics are the “symptom,” not the “disease.” And this symptom should not be used to create an “us vs. them” scenario, producing global class warfare. It is the collective consciousness of ALL of humanity that keeps the system in place.

It is humanity’s collective consciousness that contains thoughts such as “there’s not enough money to go around” (which creates the actions of the rich as well as the poor), “money is evil,” “rich people are greedy,” or “I am not worthy.” I do not see that you are holding such thoughts, Sabine. Not by the way you describe sharing with, and caring for, those around you. But creating a change in the collective consciousness across our planet is the invitation that life places before everyone --- the rich AND the poor.

Does this mean there is little you can do in your own life to improve your own family’s financial situation? Does it mean that seeking to achieve fiscal stability and money security is a lost cause? No. But it does mean that the lack of it is not because you, as an individual, are somehow bumbling around, making spiritual or metaphysical mistakes.

Now, what you CAN do, according to what Conversations with God tells us, is try these steps:

1. Drop, as of this very moment, any idea that you are at fault regarding your present financial situation.

2. Remind yourself daily of the True Purpose of Life.

3. Take your mind completely off of money and begin to focus on the Four Fundamental Questions of Life, which will help you to achieve life’s purpose. The Four Fundamental Questions of Life are: Who am I? Where am I? Why am I where I am? What do I intend to do about that?

4. Move to a place in your mind where you simply “know” that everything will be okay with you – even if you do lose your home, your car, and all of your possessions. (This idea that everything will be okay no matter what happens is not a “theory” of mine. I learned this in actual reality when I lost everything, and lived on the street for a year.)

5. Surrender --- both to Life’s Purpose, to Life’s Process, and to Life’s Promise. Remember: Purpose, Process, and Promise as the Keys to Peaceful, Joyful Living.

6. Remember and hold in your mind often the Single Most Important Message of Conversations with God: “Your life is not about you. It's about everyone whose life you touch, and the way in which you touch it.”

7. Understand that life’s most powerful tool is Gratitude. Offer the following prayer at the start of every hour for 30 days, then 3 times daily every day for six months, then, whenever it feels good to do so: “Thank you, God, for helping me to understand that this problem has already been solved for me.” And don’t need for it to be solved a certain way. Let it be solved in whatever way. Remember this insight: Life will resolve itself in the process of Life Itself.

8. Use the magnetic energy of Auto-Suggestion. Recite 99 times each day (33 times as you awaken in the morning, 33 times as the clock strikes noon, and 33 times as you fall into slumber at night) the following declaration: “Every day, in every way, my life is better and better.”

Sabine, with your permission, I would like to share with you some of the additional insights that I found in the 9 books of the Conversations with God series. Taken together, these dialogues offer some wonderful insights into the human experience.

The first thing I want to remind you of is the Purpose of life. CWG says it is to recreate yourself anew, in every golden moment of Now, in the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever you held about Who You Are. Of course, in order to do this you would have to have created such a vision. Most people go through their entire lives and never do so. So be sure to create that vision. My suggestion: write it down in a notebook or in a computer file. What is the greatest vision you ever had about Who You Are? Write out a statement describing every aspect of your personhood. Are you compassionate? Are you generous? Are you sensitive? Are you creative? Are you humorous? Are you kind and helpful, empathetic and supportive? Are you conscious and clear? Are you wise? How wise are you? Describe that. What characteristics of Divinity do you demonstrate most quickly and easily in life? Put into words the GREATEST vision you hold about Who You Are and who you choose to be. Then read it often, until you almost have it memorized. Make this part of a personal mantra, said TO your Self ABOUT your Self.

The second thing I want to remind you of is the Process of life...even though I understand that you already know this. A gentle reminder can sometimes be helpful to place things into context. As you know, life often takes us through certain chapters of loss. In my own case, I was forced to live on the street for a year when my neck was broken in an automobile accident and I couldn’t work. (The other driver’s insurance company haggled for nearly 30 months before agreeing to a settlement.) In addition, I’ve had my car stolen in my life, I’ve had two different houses in two different locations burn to the ground in huge fires (yes, not once, but twice), and I’ve experienced six failed marriages (I know that’s hard to believe, but readers of my books know it’s regrettably true. I am now in the tenth happy year [at last] of my seventh.). And if all that wasn’t enough, most recently (and most devastatingly), I’ve faced the loss through death of a dearly loved family member.

If deep loss of any kind should happen to you, it may comfort you to know that Conversations with God has taught me that the Soul knows what it is doing. The hot “fire” of these experiences may be uncomfortable, but the gifts can be tremendous. As a person approaching 75, I know that if we live long enough, it may seem as if much is being taken from us over time. But I have learned that we sometimes benefit from the fire of those losses as they burn away all that isn’t truly necessary in our lives, allowing us to discover how strong we are and to show us that we always have everything we need in our own heart, our own mind, and our own soul.

And so, certain times and moments in our lives can be about surrender instead of resistance. To me, this is a key. I remember this message from Conversations with God: “What you resist, persists, and what you look at disappears. That is, it ceases to have its illusory form.”

When we come to these times of surrender, we may well find that they are necessary in order for life to then flow in past any resistance that we may have had. A graceful acceptance replaces resistance, and the flow of energy around us is suddenly easy and free, often producing eventual outcomes we could never have imagined before we simply “let go and let God.”

Yet even if we have experienced “resistance” to events and circumstances in our lives, that does not mean that we’ve made some kind of “mistake.” It is normal to resist that which is not immediately pleasant or agreeable. What is being suggested here is that we can respond in a way which is not “normal,” but more elevated, and even unexpected.

But if, when we think about our lives, we imagine that we're “doing it wrong,” or that we're “broken” on some fundamental level, it’s going to be hard for life to flow support into our daily experience. So, as I said at the beginning, get rid of any idea that you are somehow the fault of the money challenges you are facing. Just let yourself look those challenges square in the eye, knowing that all will work out in the end. And speaking of “the end,” we all know that in the “end,” we will be leaving behind all of the material things we’ve acquired in this lifetime anyway.

I’ve often said to people in my spiritual renewal retreats, “Do not spend a lot of time worrying. You will still be here a year from today. The question is not whether you will still be here, but what will be the quality of your moments between now and then? Worry will only rob you of any pleasant present moment. And if there IS some reason, determined by fate, that you are NOT here a year from today, none of all the worry will have mattered. So worry has no value whatsoever. Worry is prayer, misdirected.”

I invite you to remember what many of our spiritual teachers have told us: “The only way around is through.” And l love how author Mary O’Malley puts it when she talks about life’s problems: “What’s in the way IS the way.”

So let your current financial challenge be a part of your life right now, Sabine. Relax into its presence, and you will find its presents. (That is, its many “gifts.”) Then tell me three years from today what it has brought you and taught you. And both of us will smile and be grateful --- but not surprised.

I send you hugs and every good thought.

Neale.

P.S. Please remember the Four Fundamental Questions of Life. If you did nothing but ask yourself these questions every day, and answer them with the powerful insights of your deepest understanding, you will give yourself an extraordinarily powerful tool with which to face life.

Once again, these questions are: 1. Who am I? (That is, what is my actual and true identity as a living entity in the cosmos?) 2. Where am I? (That is, what is this place, this realm, in the cosmos on which and within which I reside?) 3. Why am I where I am? (That is, what is my purpose here? Have I come here, arrived here, and found myself here “at random” or “by chance” — or is my being in this place part of a larger process in which Who I Am is taking part?) 4. What do I intend to do about that? (That is, what is my choice, decision, and commitment regarding the living out of the purpose and agenda I have determined is mine in this life and during my stay in this environment?)

My book The Only Thing That Matters opens with an extraordinary statement: “98% of the world’s people are spending 98% of their time on things that don’t matter.” I have found that in my own life, from a spiritual perspective, this has certainly been true about how I have spent my time. But this is because I had no idea for the first 50 years of my life about who I was and why I was here. The percentage of moments spent on things that don’t matter lowered immediately when I became clear about this. I suddenly had a measure with which to gauge my progress on a path I suddenly knew I was taking.

I’m going to offer you here my answers to those powerful questions. Not because I consider that my answers are “right”...but only because they have worked so well for me, and you may perhaps benefit from me sharing them.

1. Who am I?

I am an Individuation of Deity, a singularization of The Singularity, an aspect of Divinity. I am the Localized Expression of the Universal Presence. I am the Micro Manifestation of the Macro Magnificence. I am a Unique Energy of The Essence, which one might call Life Itself.

...all of which is to say: I am Divine.

I am That Which Is, in the act of Being. Life is God, made physical. I am God, made physical. I am not the totality of God, any more than a drop is the totality of the ocean, but I am Divinity nonetheless --- Divinity Expressed.

2. Where am I?

I am in the Realm of the Physical --- what has also been called the Realm of the Relative...which is where Experiencing occurs.

I have come from the Realm of the Spiritual --- what has also been called the Realm of the Absolute...which is where Knowing occurs.

I am on my way to the Realm of Pure Being --- which has also been called the Realm of Ultimate Reality...which is where Being occurs.

These three Realms make up the Kingdom of God. I am in Heaven. I am in Paradise.

God is a Process. I am engaged in that Process now. I always have been, and I always will be.

This is Nirvana, this is Pure Bliss. For Pure Bliss is the process of God "godding." When I do not experience Life in this way, it is because I have forgotten, and temporarily do not know, Who I Am, Where I Am, Why I Am Where I am, or What I Intend to Do Here.

3. Why am I where I am?

I am in the Realm of the Physical because I need a Contextual Field within which to Experience what I Know of myself, in order that I can Be it fully -- which is what I came here intending to do. This Contextual Field produces the experience of "relativity," where I can experience --- to use some simple examples --- fast and slow, up and down, big and small, here and there, now and then, female and male, and a range of what appear to be polarities, but what are, in fact, circles. What we call "temperature" is a good example. We think of things in polarities, such as hot and cold. But within the Contextual Field these two extremes are called "degrees." Take the two ends of the straight line that we imagine between Hottest and Coldest and bring those ends together. Notice that they then form a circle. All of it --- the whole circle --- is called “temperature.” This circular configuration is the characteristic of every “polarity.” There are no straight lines in the Universe. Everything ultimately curves in on itself. There is no such polarity as “only” male or “only” female. There is always some of both in each. It is simply a matter of degree. There is no such polarity as “only” good and “only” bad. There is always some of both in each. It is simply a matter of degree. There is no such polarity as “only” big and “only” small. There is always some of both in each. Everything is relative. A tree is big next to a flower. Next to a mountain it is small. In the Realm of the Physical, everything is relative. It is all a matter of degrees. There is no such polarity as “rich” and “poor.” There is always some of both in each. Next to a billionaire, you may feel poor. Next to a homeless person, you may feel rich. It is neither a “mistake” nor a “coincidence” that “time” is measured on a circle. Yet ask yourself this: At the exact nanosecond that the clock strikes midnight, is it “yesterday” or “today”?

My soul is on a journey using this infinite circle of the Contextual Field. It is an eternal journey from the Realm of Pure Being to the Realm of the Spiritual to the Realm of the Physical, then returning to the Realm of Pure Being, where the cycle begins anew.

This Cycle has a purpose. It is important for me to know this, lest I think that I am on an endless merry-go-round. The purpose of the Cycle of Life is to express and expand the Reality of God.

In simple terms, God is growing --- becoming more of Itself --- through this process. God IS this process. That is, God is the Process Itself...and the result of it. Thus, God is The Creator and The Created. The Alpha and the Omega. The Beginning and The End. The Unmoved Mover. The Unwatched Watcher.

4. What do I intend to do about that?

I intend to engage in the Process of God. In the Realm of the Physical I am producing and then living within a Contextual Field in order that inner experiences may occur. What inner experiences? The inner experiences that I choose.

I make this choice by my response to the exterior experiences and events of the Contextual Field, and my decision with regard to it. Within ths Contextual Field I can React, Create, or Intend. It is up to me.

The process by which I Experience what I came to physicality to experience is a process of increasing my Awareness of the Process Itself. As I become more and more Aware, I move from Reaction to Creation to Intention to Expression.

The Unknowing person reacts. The Student creates. The Master intends. The Divine expresses.

In life there are those who Don't Know, and who don't know that they Don't Know.

Then there are those who Don't Know, but who know that they Don't Know.

Then there are those Don't Know, but who think that they Know.

Then are there are those who Know, but who don't know that they Know.

Then there are those who Know, but who pretend that they Don't Know.

Then there are those who Know, and who know that they Know.

Life in the Realm of the Physcial invites me to Know, and to Know That I Know. It invites me to Master the Moment. I can do this by moving into each moment deciding ahead of time what I Intend to experience internally.

I seek not to use my life as an experience of reaction, nor even as an experience of creation, but as an experience of intention, producing the expression of Divinity. This is mastery.

In truth I cannot create anything, because everything that ever was, is now, and ever will be, IS NOW. I am therefore wasting my time trying to create something. That is child's play. I am in the sandbox of metaphysics, playing with toys, pretending to create something that has already been created, by simply becoming aware of it. I did not come here for that. I came here to Experience my Self as Who I Really Am; to express through me, as me, an aspect of Divinity -- and to recreate myself anew in the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever I held about Who I Am.

Those are my ideas, emerging directly from the Conversations with God material. They may not work for you at all, or make sense to you in any way. I offer them humbly because, as I said, they have worked for me.

May you have the experience of God’s blessings flowing to you, and through you, all the days of your life.

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NOTE: For more of these kinds of probing questions and in-depth answers, go now to www.CWGConnect.com